Ho­tel Cal­i­for­nia reis­sued for 40th an­niver­sary

The Ea­gles’ “Ho­tel Cal­i­for­nia” will be reis­sued in a deluxe 40th an­niver­sary edi­tion on Nov. 24, pair­ing the re­mas­tered orig­i­nal stu­dio al­bum with 10 live tracks recorded at the Fo­rum in In­gle­wood around the time the work was re­leased.

The 40th an­niver­sary des­ig­na­tion is be­ing ap­plied some­what loosely. “Ac­tu­ally, it came out in De­cem­ber of 1976, but noth­ing re­ally hit the charts un­til ‘77, so we’re not re­ally that late,” Ea­gles found­ing mem­ber and song­writer Don Hen­ley told The Times re­cently. “We’re fudg­ing it a lit­tle bit.”

In fact, the first sin­gle from the al­bum, “New Kid in Town,” sneaked in just be­fore year’s end, pre­mier­ing on the Bill­board Hot 100 sin­gles chart on Dec. 18, 1976, on its way to a peak at No. 1 dur­ing its 15-week chart run.

The al­bum’s ti­tle track pre­miered on Feb. 26, 1977, and spent 19 weeks in the top 100, also reach­ing No. 1. Hen­ley re­called that be­cause the song clocked in at lit­tle more than six min­utes, “Of course, the la­bel said it was too long and that we had to cut it down. We said, ‘No, we’re not. You’re ei­ther go­ing to put it out like it is or you’re not go­ing to put it out.’” The band pre­vailed.

A third sin­gle, “Life in the Fast Lane,” made it as high as No. 11 and re­mained in the Hot 100 for 14 weeks.

The al­bum it­self be­came one of the best­selling al­bums of all time, and logged eight weeks at No. 1 in 1977. Ul­ti­mately, it lasted more than two years — 107 weeks — on the Bill­board 200 al­bums tally. It has sold more than 32 mil­lion copies world­wide, ac­cord­ing to a spokesman at the Warner Mu­sic Group, which is reis­su­ing the al­bum.

The deluxe edi­tion will in­clude two CDs — the orig­i­nal al­bum on one, the live tracks on the other — along with a Blu-Ray con­tain­ing a new high-res­o­lu­tion (192KHz/24bit) stereo mix of the stu­dio al­bum, high-res mul­ti­chan­nel sound (96Khz/24-bit) and a 5.1 Dolby Dig­i­tal sur­round-sound mix pre­vi­ously re­leased in 2001.

The deluxe pack­age also comes with an 11-by-11-inch book, pre­vi­ously un­pub­lished pho­tos from the era, a replica tour book and an 11-by 22-inch poster. That ver­sion car­ries a list price of $99.98 US.

The 40th an­niver­sary “Ho­tel Cal­i­for­nia” also will be re­leased in a two-CD ex­panded edi­tion (list­ing for $19.98) and a sin­gle CD ($9.98), along with dig­i­tal and stream­ing edi­tions.